CHAPTER V.

II.--SOCIOLOGICAL CHARACTERS.

1. /Material Life/: _Alimentation_: Geophagy--Anthropophagy--Preparation of foods--Fire--Pottery--Grinding of corn--Stimulants and narcotics--_Habitation_: Two primitive types of dwellings--Permanent dwelling (hut)--Removable dwelling (tent)--Difference of origin of the materials employed in the two types--Villages--Furniture--Heating and lighting--_Clothing_: Nakedness and modesty--Ornament precedes dress--Head-dress--Ethnic mutilations--Tattooing--Girdle, necklace, and garland the origin of all dress--Manufacture of garments--Spinning and weaving--_Means of existence_: tools of primitive industry--Hunting--Fishing--Agriculture--Domestication and rearing of animals.

1. MATERIAL LIFE.

_Alimentation._--The first and most imperious preoccupation of man at all times is the search for food. It is therefore natural that we should begin our brief account of sociological characters with those relating to this preoccupation.

In tropical countries man finds in nature without effort edible plants in sufficient quantity for his support. It is said that in the island of Ceram a single sago-tree will yield what will nourish a man for a whole year.

In temperate countries there are also not wanting vegetable species which, with only slight effort on man’s part, produce nutritive substances. The animal world also supplies everywhere a great variety of species suitable for food. These, for the most part, belong to the division of vertebrates or molluscs; however, certain of the arthropods (crustaceans, insects, etc.), echinoderms (sea-urchins), nay, even worms (large earthworms of China, Tonkin, and Melanesia), also furnish their contingent to human gluttony.

The mineral kingdom contributes only salt, which, however, is unknown to certain tribes, as, for example, the Veddahs (Sarazin), the Somalis (Lapicque), etc. Besides, according to Bunge,[169] peoples whose food is almost exclusively animal (as is the case of the Veddahs, Eskimo, etc.) never eat salt, while those whose chief food is of vegetable origin experience an irresistible need for this condiment, probably because of the insufficiency of mineral substances in plants.

Perhaps also to this need of supplying the deficiency of mineral substances (calcareous or alkaline salts) is due the habit of eating certain earthy substances--kaolin, clay, limestone. _Geophagy_ has, in fact, been observed in all parts of the world: in Senegal (the earth called “konak”), in Persia (argillaceous earth from Nichapur and the saline steppes of Kirman, composed of carbonate of magnesia and chalk),[170] and especially in the Asiatic archipelago, in India, and South America. In the markets of Java are sold little squares or figures in baked clay (“ampo” in Javanese) which are much valued, especially by pregnant women.[171] In Calcutta are sold similar products, and in several towns of Peru hawkers offer for sale little figures in edible earth. The Indians of Bolivia eat a white clay, a kind of kaolin called “pasa.”[172] The Whites settled in South America are likewise addicted to geophagy. Women assert that the eating of earth gives a delicate complexion to the face. The same custom has also been pointed out among women in several countries of Europe, more especially in Spain, where the sandy clay which is used for making the “alcarrazas” is especially in vogue as an edible earth.[173]

We must now pass on to speak of another food--human flesh. _Anthropophagy_ is much less general than is usually believed. Many peoples have been wrongly accused of this crime against humanity by travellers who have had neither the time nor the means necessary to verify the fact, and by writers who here formed a hasty generalisation from isolated facts.[174]

Cannibalism has also been too hastily inferred from the observation of facts like “head-hunting,” or the practice of adorning houses with human skulls and bones. As with human sacrifices, these are perhaps survivals of ancient cannibalism, but not proofs of its existence at the present time.

Besides, it must be noted that most of the statements of authors have reference to bygone times, which would lead us to suppose that anthropophagy is a custom tending to disappear among all peoples, even among those who have not been converted to one of the religions whose dogmas condemn this practice (Christianity, Buddhism, worship of Riamba in Africa,[175] Islamism, etc.).

It appears from the very conscientious work of P. Bergemann,[176] that actually the only regions of the world where anthropophagy has been really proved to exist are Oceania (including the Asiatic Archipelago), Central Africa, and Southern America.

The Battas of Sumatra, the natives of the Solomon Islands, of New Britain, and of certain islands of the New Hebrides, as well as a large number of Australian tribes, are known as incorrigible cannibals. We can speak less confidently as to the other inhabitants of Oceania. Dyaks, Fijians, New Caledonians, Karons of New Guinea, seem to have abandoned cannibalism. In South America positive facts abound concerning the anthropophagy of the Arovaques and certain Indians of Columbia, the Botocudos and some other Brazilian tribes; but for the rest of the continent they resolve themselves into the statements of ancient travellers or to the report of survivals. On the other hand, Central Africa appears to be the chief seat of anthropophagy. It is of frequent occurrence among the Niam-Niams, the Monbuttus, the Bandziris, and other tribes of the River Ubangi, as well as among the tribes of the Congo basin, the Basangos, the Manyuema, the tribes of Kassai, etc. We have likewise genuine proofs enough for the Fans of French Congo and certain tribes of the Benguelas. In general, cannibalism appears to be unknown in Africa beyond the tenth degree of latitude to the north and south of the Equator.

Cannibalism is practised for three reasons: necessity, gluttony, superstition.

_Necessary Anthropophagy_ may take place in consequence of the want of animal food, as in Australia, or in consequence of accidental circumstances (shipwreck, famine), as it may occur even among civilised peoples; but this kind of cannibalism is as rare as that which is attributable to _gluttony_. It is said, however, that the Melanesians of the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, and New Britain hunt man merely to satisfy their taste for human flesh. The Niam-Niams pursue the same kind of sport not only for the flesh, but for the human fat which they utilise for lighting purposes. Various tribes of the Ubangi buy slaves or capture men separated from their fellows in order to fatten them up and eat them afterwards; sometimes, to improve the flavour of this kind of meat, the carcasses are left to soak in water; similar facts have been observed among the Manyuema. However that may be, the majority of cases of cannibalism may be explained by _superstitious beliefs_. There is especially a belief in the possibility of appropriating the virtues and the qualities of a man by eating the whole or certain portions of his body--the heart, the eyes, the liver. Sometimes drinking the blood of the victim is regarded as sufficient.[177]

Of the three causes which I have just enumerated the first two are probably the remains of downright anthropophagy--that is to say, of the habit of eating one’s relatives and especially one’s offspring just the same as any other flesh, as it exists among many animals. The Australians, for example, are known to eat their children which they have killed for other reasons (restriction of progeny).

R. S. Steinmetz[178] has thought it possible to bring together all these cases of anthropophagy under the name of “endocannibalism,” or the practice of eating parents and relatives. He mentions a great number of tribes in which this practice exists alone or combined with “exocannibalism,” that is to say the habit of eating the flesh of strangers. This second sort of cannibalism, much more widely diffused, however, than endocannibalism, is alone amenable to moral, religious, or social ideas, while endocannibalism is but the remains of a natural state of primitive man, the residue of instincts which still stirred his soul at the period when he wandered solitary through the virgin forests without realising the possibility of forming any social group whatever.[179]

Ritual anthropophagy persists for a considerable length of time, and may accord with a relatively developed civilisation. The Battas, the Monbuttus, the Niam-Niams, are tribes almost half civilised; one has a well-developed method of writing and a style of ornament, the others have a fairly advanced social organisation. As a survival, anthropophagy manifests itself not only in the practice of cutting off the heads (Dyaks) in human sacrifices, but also in a multitude of religious or superstitious practices among a great number of even civilised peoples. The belief in the supposed curative properties of human flesh, especially that of executed criminals, is still in full force in China,[180] and was so in Europe in ancient times and in the Middle Ages; the Salic law forbade the magical practices associated with anthropophagy. To drink from the skull of an enemy was a very widespread custom in Asia and Europe, and even until the beginning of this century the remains of the skull of a hanged criminal figured among the remedies in the pharmacopœias of Central Europe.

_Preparation of Foods._--There is no people on earth which eats all its food quite raw, without having subjected it to previous _preparation_. Some few northern tribes, the Eskimo, the Chukchi, eat, it is true, reindeer’s flesh and fish quite raw, but they cut these up, prepare dried provisions from them, and moreover they cook their vegetable food.

Food is prepared by cutting it into pieces, subjecting it to a fermentation, moistening it, triturating it, and especially by exposing it to the action of fire.

No tribe exists, even at the bottom of the scale of civilisation, which is not to-day acquainted with the _use of fire_, and as far back as we can go into prehistoric times we find material traces of the employment of fire (cinders, charcoal, pieces of worn-out pyrites, cracked flint, etc.). However, the _preservation_ of fire produced by the natural forces (conflagrations, lightning, volcanoes, etc.) must have preceded the _production_ of fire (Broca, Von den Steinen). Most of the forces of nature transformable into heat--light, electricity, motion, and chemical affinity--have been turned to account by man in the production of fire with more or less success. Kindling flame by concentrating the solar light with bi-convex glasses and mirrors, mentioned from the remotest antiquity, could never have become general. It is the same with electricity. On the other hand, motion and chemical affinity have been at all times, and still are, pre-eminently the two productive forces of fire. Motion is utilised in three different ways: by the friction of two pieces of wood, by the striking together of two pieces of certain mineral substances, or by pneumatic compression. The last method is little used; it has been observed among the Dyaks of Borneo and in Burma. It is based on the principle of the _pneumatic tinder-box_ of our scientific demonstration rooms. But the two other modes of utilising motion are still in general use among all savage peoples.[181]

A little red-hot ember capable of setting fire to certain substances (tinder, down, dry grass, etc.) may be obtained either by rubbing together two pieces of wood, or by sawing one across the other, or by turning the end of one in a little hole made in the other. Hence, three ways of making fire by friction, each having a well-defined geographical area. The first way (simple rubbing), the most primitive and the least easy, is employed especially in Oceania. It consists in rubbing a little stick of hard wood, bending it downward, against a log of soft wood held between the knees (Fig. 34). A little channel is thus hollowed out of the log, and in the end the operator succeeds in obtaining incandescent particles of pulverised wood, which gather at the bottom of the channel. He has only to throw in a little dry grass or tinder and to blow upon it to obtain the flame.

The _sawing_ method (Fig. 35) is employed by the Malays and by some Australian tribes, as well as in Burma and India. A piece of bamboo split longitudinally is sawn with the cutting edge of another piece of bamboo until the sawdust becomes hot and sets fire to the tinder on which it falls.

The _twirling_ or _rotatory_ method (Fig. 36), which consists in turning the end of a fragment of wood supported on the surface of another fragment, is the most generally used. It is met with among Negroes, the Indians of North and South America, the Chukchi, in certain regions of India, etc. The most primitive apparatus consists of a log or board of soft wood, held horizontally with the feet, on which is placed the blunted point of a cylindrical stick of hard wood. Twirling the stick rapidly between the hands in both directions, a little hole is hollowed and the dust of the wood which gathers around the point becomes incandescent. It is thus that some tribes of Zulus and of Australians, the Ainus, etc., make fire.

But to this primitive apparatus important improvements are made among other populations, especially among the Redskins and the Eskimo. The hole in a horizontal board is hollowed out beforehand, then a communication is made between this hole and one of the vertical faces of the board by a channel through which escapes to the outside the woody powder produced by rubbing, in the form of little incandescent cylinders, which falls on the tinder. As to the upright stick, different contrivances are fitted to it to render its motion more rapid and more regular. Thus the Eskimo wind round it a cord which is drawn alternately in both directions;[182] in this case the upper end of the stick is held by an assistant or by the operator himself. They apply also to these apparatus a mouth-drill, etc.

The second method of obtaining fire, that of _striking together_ two pieces of iron pyrites or two pieces of flint, or flint against pyrites, must, like the first, have been known from the most remote period. To-day it is only employed by some few backward tribes--Fuegians, Eskimo, Aleuts. With the knowledge of iron, which replaced pyrites, the true “flint and steel” was invented; it very quickly superseded in Europe and Asia the production of fire by friction, as, in its turn, it has been superseded by apparatus utilising the chemical affinity of different bodies (matches).

But the old processes survive in traditions, in religion. Thus the present Brahmins of India obtain fire for religious ceremonies by the friction of two sticks, in front of shops where English matches are sold; it is still by friction that the Indians of America, amply provided with matches, procure fire for the sacred festivals. Even in Europe, in Great Britain, and in Sweden, at the beginning of this century the fire intended for superstitious uses (to preserve animals and people against contagious diseases) was kindled by rubbing together two pieces of wood. This practice was forbidden by a decree, dating from the end of last century, in the same district of Jönköping whence to-day are sent forth by millions the famous Swedish matches.[183]

The long and difficult processes of obtaining fire compel savage tribes to preserve it as one of the most precious things. Almost everywhere it is to women that the care is committed. Among the Australians, women who let the fire go out are punished almost as severely as were the Roman vestals of old. The Papuans of Astrolabe Bay (New Guinea) prefer to go several leagues in search of fire to a neighbouring tribe than to light another (Miklukho-Maclay). The preparation of “new fire” among a great number of tribes, especially in America and Oceania, is celebrated with festivals and religious ceremonies.[184]

_Cooking._--Fire, once discovered, heat, light, and at the same time the means of rendering a great variety of foods more digestible, were artificially assured to man. But it is somewhat difficult to roast a piece of meat in the fire, especially when there is not a metal skewer at hand, as was the case with primitive man. So, at an early stage, he tried to find some method of cooking his food, especially fruits. He heated stones in the open fire, and with these stones he cooked his meat and vegetables. The process is still in use to-day among tribes unacquainted with pottery. Thus the Polynesians before their “civilisation” by Europeans proceeded in the following way to cook their food. Stones heated in the fire were put at the bottom of a hole dug in the ground; upon these stones was spread a layer of leaves, on which were placed the fruit of the bread-tree, then a fresh layer of leaves and other heated stones; care being taken to cover the whole with leaves and earth. In half-an-hour a delicious dish was drawn out of the hole.[185]

Among most savage Indonesians food is cooked in bamboo vessels filled with water, in which heated stones have been previously plunged. This method of cooking with stones is also in use at the two extreme points of America, among the Indians of Alaska and the Fuegians. It is even used in Europe among the Serbian and Albanian mountaineers.

_Pottery._--But real cooking, even of the simplest sort, is only possible with the existence of _pottery_, the manufacture of which must have followed closely on the discovery of a method of obtaining fire, for no example is known of unbaked pottery.

There are still peoples unacquainted with this art, such as the Australians and the Fuegians, but the absence of it is not always the sign of an inferior degree of civilisation, as we may see in the Polynesians before the arrival of Europeans, and also the present Mongols, whose cooking utensils consist of iron, wooden, and leather vessels, for pottery which easily breaks would be an encumbrance in nomadic life.

The most primitive pottery is made without the potter’s wheel. In its manufacture we may admit, with Otis Mason,[186] three special methods of working. _Modelling_ by hand; _moulding_ to an exterior or interior mould, usually a basket or other object of wicker-work, which burns away afterwards in the baking (Figs. 37 and 38); and lastly, a method of proceeding which may be called _coiling_ in clay. Long strings of clay are taken and rolled so as to form a cone or a cylinder, or any other form of the future pot, then the sides are made even.

The Zuñi Indians of New Mexico begin this work in a little basket-dish (Fig. 39), which shows the connection of this method with that of moulding, whilst the Wolofs, whom I have seen working in the same way, as well as the Kafirs (Fig. 135, to the left), have only as a base to work upon a clay disc or a wooden porringer, moulding being unknown to them. But in both cases this mode of manufacture is already a step towards pottery formed by the wheel, only instead of the clay it is the hand of the workman which turns, naturally much more slowly. Besides, the primitive wheel, that is to say, a disc or a board set in motion by the hand, sometimes without a pivot, as still seen in China, does not revolve with the dizzy speed of the true wheel, the construction of which is an adaptation of the general processes of the transmission of forces by means of levers and wheels.

In regard to pottery it must be noted that its manufacture is left almost exclusively to women among most of the tribes of America, while it is entrusted without distinction to men and women in Africa.

_Grinding of Corn._--We need not dwell on the means of preparing food independently of the action of fire (milk and its products, pemmican, etc.); they vary infinitely. Let us deal briefly, however, with the method of preparing grain. Many peoples are unacquainted with flour: they eat the grain either roasted or cooked, as we do still the most anciently known perhaps of the graminaceæ, rice and millet. In the primitive state of agriculture certain tribes of North America combined in one single operation the threshing, winnowing, and roasting of grain. After being triturated between the hands, the grain is thrown into a basket-dish (Fig. 40) in which are red-hot stones; the straw burns, the husk comes off and partly burns too, whilst the grain is being roasted.

From the time when some intelligent man perceived when crushing a grain of corn, perhaps by chance, between two stones, that flour might supply a more delicate food than roasted grain, the art of the miller was discovered. There are three ways of preparing flour: pounding in a mortar, trituration on a flat surface, and true grinding by means of a mill turned by the hand or other motor power--animals, water, wind, steam.

The mortar, used by a great number of savage or half-civilised tribes to crush not only grain but also the roots of starchy plants, cassava, yam, etc., must have been known for a very long time. Its most primitive form is met with among the Indians of North America--a block of granite or sandstone in which a cavity has been made, with a piece of porous rock, almost cylindrical, for the pestle. In Africa and Oceania the mortar and pestle are of wood. Almost everywhere the pounding is done by women. The rudest hand-mills, such as are met with among the Arabs, the Kabyles, the Bushmen, are made of a round stone pierced in the centre, turned on another stone by means of a handle passing through the hole. Incisions on the triturating surface of the millstone is not found as yet in these primitive machines.

_The preservation of food_ is known to a great number of savage and half-civilised tribes. The Eskimo preserve their meat by means of cold, many fisher peoples resort to salting, the art of preparing true pemmican by enclosing the food in a mass of grease or honey is known to the Veddahs of Ceylon, to Negroes, etc.

_Stimulants._--Among most savage peoples special _fermented beverages_ are found: “koumiss,” or fermented mare’s milk, among the Turco-Mongols; bamboo beer among the Moïs of French Indo-China; millet or eleusine beer among the Negroes; sago-juice wine among the populations of the coast of the Indian Ocean--Dravidians (Fig. 81), Indonesians, Malays; “pulque,” derived from the juice of the agave, among the Mexicans of the high table-lands. I must lastly mention “kava,” the national beverage of the Polynesians, concocted from the juice of the leaves of a pepper-plant (_Piper methysticum_), which is made to ferment by means of the ptyalin of the saliva, these leaves being previously chewed in company, each spitting out his “quid” into the common dish.

The distillation of fermented liquids for the purpose of obtaining alcohol is known to most semi-civilised peoples. We need but instance the “arka” of the Turco-Mongols derived from “koumiss,” the arrack of the Chinese and Japanese, etc.

Among the stimulants, tonics, narcotics, drugs, etc., other than fermented beverages, and tea, coffee, and chocolate of international fame, must be mentioned the kola nut used as a stimulant on a large scale in the whole of Western Africa; the “maté” (_Ilex paraguayensis_) taking the place of tea in a large portion of South America; different roots and certain fish (like the _Fistularia serrata_ of Java)[187] used by way of aphrodisiacs; lastly, the “coca” of the Peruvians and Bolivians (_Erithroxylon coca_), the leaves of which taken as an infusion plunge you, says Mantegazza, in the most delicious dreams, while pulverised and chewed with lime they only act as a stimulant. It is possible that the chewing of _betel_ or _siri_, that is to say, areca palm nut mixed with shell lime and wrapped in a leaf of betel (_Chavica betle_), produce the same effect; but this habit appears to be induced by hygienic considerations in regard to the mouth. However that may be, the chewing of betel nut, inseparable from Malaysian civilisation, always has a tendency to blacken the teeth of peoples addicted to it.[188]

The practice of tobacco smoking, universal at the present day, only spread into Europe in the sixteenth century. In the primitive home of this plant, America, the Indians smoke moderately, although the pipe with them plays a ceremonial part (“the calumet of peace,” etc.). The pipe, which in Europe is yielding place to the cigar, is still held in great honour throughout the whole of Asia, where ethnographers point out more than 150 ethnic varieties of this object, without counting the numerous forms of “narghile.” The cigarette appears to be of Malay origin.[189] The habit of smoking opium, which so speedily becomes an invincible passion, tends at the present day to spread wherever Chinese influence penetrates: in Corea, Indo-China, etc.

The practice of smoking haschish, a product of Indian hemp (_Cannabis Indica_), is localised in Persia and Asia Minor; but it is found also among the Baluba Negroes of the Congo basin, who attach to it a great importance from the politico-religious point of view.

Not satisfied with eating, drinking, inhaling by the mouth, and chewing stimulants, man absorbs them too by the nose. The habit of taking a pinch of snuff, formerly the fashion in the best society of Europe, seems now to be relegated to the lower classes. But among several of the Bantu Negroes of Uganda, of the Cameroons, and the east coast of Africa, snuff-taking (introduced by Europeans?) is still in great honour, and Kafirs in high positions carry coquettishly very small snuffboxes in the lobe of their ears. Instead of snuff, the Mura Indians of the Lower Amazon take “parica,” a very stimulating powder, which is derived from the dry seeds of a vegetable called “Inga.” The stuff is taken by two persons together, during the festival of the ripening of the Inga. One of these Indian braves puts the parica into a tube and puffs it into the nose of his companion.[190]

As Letourneau[191] judiciously observes, the chief motive for the use of various drugs and stimulants all over the earth is the desire experienced by every human being to emancipate himself, if even for a moment, from the ordinary conditions of existence. He is only too happy to be able to find at pleasure, in the midst of the fatigues, the annoyances, and the miseries of daily life, a moment of forgetfulness, the semblance of refuge.

_Habitation._--The natural shelters--caverns, overhanging rocks, holes in the ground, thick foliage, hollow trunks of trees, etc.--must have been utilised by primitive man as places of abode. But which of these shelters served as a model for the first artificial dwellings? Not the cavern, for even now it is made use of just as it is by civilised populations in China, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and even France, in the valley of the Cher. Besides, with the exception, perhaps, of the huts of the Eskimo, half underground and covered with a dome of ice blocks, constructions in mineral substances are scarcely found among savage peoples.[192] Substances of vegetable origin were those first utilised for fixed habitations (hut, etc.), and substances derived from animals for dwellings which could be carried.[193]

The _hut_, which is the prototype of the _fixed habitation_, is derived probably from the _screen_ formed of a series of branches stuck in the ground, as one sees it still among the Australians. Sometimes this screen is constructed of large palm-leaves resting against crossed branches, as for example among the Veddahs of Ceylon, Andamanese, the Botocudos, and other Indians of Brazil. The leafy branches of these screens had but to be arranged in the form of a circle or in two parallel rows, their tops joined together, the interstices stopped up with grasses, moss, and bark, in order that the frail shelter might be transformed into a stronger dwelling, a better protection against the inclemencies of the weather. The form which this primitive dwelling was thus obliged to take depended then, before everything else, on the arrangement of the branches of the screen: if put in the form of a circle the hut became conical provided the branches used in its construction were rigid and but little spread out (Fuegians); hemispherical, cupola-shaped, if they were flexible and leafy (Australians); if they were placed in two parallel rows the hut took the form of a two-sided roof, flat (Indians of the Amazon), or convex (Todas), according to the materials.

Trying to secure themselves still better from the rain, the wind, and the sun, the first architects must have dug out the soil beneath the hut, as the Ainus, the Chukchi, the Kamtchadales still do at the present time, and this may have suggested the idea, as Tylor says,[194] of extending the vertical walls above the ground. The rushes, the little twigs, and the clods of potter’s clay or grass which were used at first to stop up the holes, eventually formed the walls, and the ancient hut thus raised was transformed into a dwelling a little more comfortable, having _roof_ and _walls_. This was probably the origin of the hive-shaped huts of the Zulu Kafirs (Fig. 41), and the cylindrical, conical-roofed huts of the Ovampos (Fig. 42), and the Gauls of the time of Cæsar. Straw entering into the composition of the roof, and sometimes even the body of these dwellings, they may be styled _straw huts_ or _thatched huts_. As to the quadrangular huts, they are transformed in the same manner into those little houses so characteristic of the Muchikongos, of French Congo and the coast of Guinea.[195] Among the peoples inhabiting the shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, from the Kamtchadales and the Indians of the north-west of America to the Maoris and the natives of Madagascar, the quadrangular houses are erected on poles even when they are far from water. The materials of which they are constructed are bamboos, reeds, and palm-leaves.[196]

In order to give solidity to the straw and reed-built walls, it must have been necessary at an early period to plaster them over with potter’s earth (Senegal, palafittes of the bronze age in Europe). In very dry countries it was seen that lumps of clay were able of themselves to form sufficiently solid walls, and this observation has led naturally enough to the making of sun-dried bricks, which were known to the Babylonians, to the Egyptians, and are still used to-day in the Sudan, in Turkestan, and Mexico.

_Movable Habitations._--From the moment when the tired hunter of primitive times fell asleep beneath the skin of a wild beast spread out on two or three poles, and folded it up on the morrow to carry it away with him in his wanderings, the _tent_ was invented. Skins continued to be the best material for its construction until the invention of felt and stuffs, plaited or woven of a sufficient breadth. Bark has only been used exceptionally, in Siberia for example, and for summer tents only (Fig. 43). Like the hut, the tent may be circular, conical (Indians of North America), cupola-shaped (Kafirs), or quadrangular in the form of a prismatic roof (Thibetans, Gypsies). The last-mentioned of these forms has not been improved on, and the Arab tent of the present day, which is derived from it, differs from its prototype only in its dimensions and the awning set up at the entrance. On the other hand, the two circular forms have been improved on by the use of pieces of wattling instead of poles, and felt instead of skins. The tent has thus become a comfortable dwelling, the best suited to the life of half-civilised nomads, a real house with a roof, conical in the “Gher” of the Mongols (Fig. 44), almost hemispherical in the “Yourte” of the Kirghiz.[197] This dwelling of the nomads has even served as a model for the permanent wooden habitations of the tribes of the Yenisei or Altai. Their wooden house has a ground-plan of hexagonal or octagonal form, imitating the circular yourte or felt tent (Fig. 45), and it is only little by little, under Russian influence, that it is transformed into a four-sided house.[198] The “mazankis” of the Teleuts of Siberia and the Little Russians with their walls of fascines plastered with clay and lime, are only imitations of wattled tents.

As social life becomes more complicated, there appear, side by side with the dwelling properly so called, other structures: granaries and storehouses, ordinarily built on wooden pillars (among the Malays and the Ainus), or on a clay stand (among the Negroes of the Sudan) or a wooden support (Fig. 42), to protect them against the attacks of wild beasts. Access to them, as to the houses on poles, is gained by primitive ladders, a series of notches in a tree-trunk. Other structures, light straw huts on trees, serve as refuges in case of attack and as posts of observation to watch the movements of enemies. The idea of defence was also the first motive for the grouping of houses into villages. In non-civilised countries almost always the villages and urban agglomerations are surrounded with palisades (Kraal of the Kafirs, Fig. 46), ditches, sometimes filled with traps and prickles (Laos), lastly, with walls. Watch-towers replace the airy posts of observation on trees (example: Lesghi village of the Caucasus). According to the forms of propriety (see